THE following narrative first appeared in German in the columns
of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, the principal organ of
the German speaking Socialists in the United States. Its author,
who escaped from Germany and military service after 11 months
of fighting in France, is an intelligent young miner. He does
not wish to have his name made public, fearing that those who
will be offended by his frankness might vent their wrath on his
relatives. Since his arrival in this country his friends and
acquaintances have come to know him as an upright and truthful
man whose word can be relied upon.

The vivid description of the life of a common German soldier
in the present war aroused great interest when the story presented
in these pages to the English speaking reader was published in
serial form. For here was an historian of the war who had been
through the horrors of the carnage as one of the "Huns,"
one of the "Boches"; a soldier who had not abdicated
his reason; a warrior against his will, who nevertheless had
to conform to the etiquette of war; a hater of militarism for
whom there was no romance in war, but only butchery and brutality,
grime and vermin, inhuman toil and degradation. Moreover, he
was found to be no mean observer of men and things. His technical
training at a school of mining enabled him to obtain a much clearer
understanding of the war of position than the average soldier
possesses.

Most soldiers who have been in the war and have written down
their experiences have done so in the customary way, never questioning
for a moment the moral justification of war. Not so our author.
He could not persuade his conscience to make a distinction between
private and public morality, and the angle from which he views
the events he describes is therefore entirely different from
that of other actual observers of and participators in war. His
story also contains the first German description of the retreat
of the Teutonic armies after the battle of the Marne. The chief
value of this soldier's narrative lies, however, in his destructive,
annihilating criticism of the romance and fabled virtues of war.
If some of the incidents related in this book appear to be treated
too curtly it is solely due to this author's limited literary
powers. If, for instance, he does not dwell upon his inner experiences
during his terrible voyage to America in the coal bunker of a
Dutch ship it is because he is not a literary artist, but a simple
workman.

The translator hopes that he has succeeded in reproducing
faithfully the substance and the spirit of the story, and that
this little book will contribute in combating one of the forces
that make for war---popular ignorance of war's realities. Let
each individual fully grasp and understand the misery, degradation,
and destruction that await him in war, and the barbarous ordeal
by carnage will quickly become the most unpopular institution
on earth.